Re:Whistleblower: Google Boss' Daughter Scrubbed from Guardi...
by nabla9 on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @06:58AM
(#21190861)
> Why would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. And he looks at me like I am mad. “It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit.” Why would anyone want to intern with a psychological warfare firm, I ask him. And he looks at me like I am mad. “It was like working for MI6. Only it’s MI6 for hire. It was very posh, very English, run by an old Etonian and you got to do some really cool things. Fly all over the world. You were working with the president of Kenya or Ghana or wherever. It’s not like election campaigns in the west. You got to do all sorts of crazy shit.”
>On that day in January 2013, Sophie met up with SCL’s chief executive, Alexander Nix, and gave him the germ of an idea. “She said, ‘You really need to get into data.’ She really drummed it home to Alexander. And she mentioned to him a firm that belonged to someone she knew about through her father.”
In the newest version, it reads:
> In some ways, an intern showing up and referring to Palantir is just another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched.
while the original version read:
> In some ways, Eric Schmidt’s daughter showing up and referring to Palantir is just another weird detail in the weirdest story I have ever researched.
They didn't just edit her out - instead, they completely changed the meaning of the text. By changing the point of those paragraphs from "here is how well-connected people behaved in this scandal" to "isn't it quirky that powerful people would listen to a random, unremarkable intern?" they have gone completely against the whistleblower's point.
I can definitely understand why he's so angry about this.